1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a barrier detection system, particularly to a vehicular collision warning system, which is installed on a large-size vehicle, and used to detect the barriers in the driver's blind spots, and warn the driver early.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a large-size vehicle has greater height and length, the driver has limited vision area, and a considerable number of blind spots exist around the large-size vehicle. For example, there are some blind spots in the front side, left side, and right side of a large-size vehicle. Many accidents of large-size vehicles are attributed to the blind spots. The front of a large-size vehicle usually has a ground view mirror because the direct impact causes the most serious harm to pedestrians or vehicles.
The EU ECE R46 (European Union Economic Commission for Europe Regulation No. 46) concerns the blind spots for a driver of a large-size vehicle and provides regulations for front view mirrors and rear view mirrors. However, the rear view mirror is a curved-surface mirror. Thus, the driver cannot determine the distances between the vehicle and the surrounding objects instinctively but judges them with experience. Even multiple view mirrors cannot eliminate all the blind spots. To make matters worse, it is hard for the driver to watch all the view mirrors simultaneously. Further, the view mirrors cannot warn the driver actively. Thus, the driver himself still has to be very careful about the blind spots surrounding the vehicle lest an accident occur. Therefore, only installing view mirrors is insufficient to prevent traffic accidents.
Some references propose solutions for the abovementioned problems. For an example, a Taiwan patent No. M303843 uses a wide-angle camera to capture the images of around the blind spots and uses a display device to present the images in the driver's cabin. However, the driver cannot always watch the images anytime. If the driver distracts his attention to the images, an accident may occur contrarily. For another example, an EP patent No. EP1988488 disclosed a detection system to detect moving objects inside blind spots, wherein a camera is also used to capture the images around the vehicle, and the picture is divided into several blocks. The mobility of the blocks is analyzed to determine whether there are barriers around the vehicle. When the picture is divided into greater blocks, the recognizability is poor, which is likely to cause a wrong detection. When the picture is divided into smaller blocks, the recognizability is promoted. However, smaller blocks (more blocks in a picture) may overburden the processor and cause that the detection system cannot warn the driver timely.
Accordingly, the present invention proposes a vehicular collision warning system, which performs high-efficiency image processing to detect the blind spots, especially the blind spots before and beside the vehicle, and which warns the driver in different intensities according to the grading of danger, whereby are overcome the conventional problems.